New Haven Coliseum architect left town the day it was imploded

The New Haven coliseum, R.I.P., in this photo taken from Gateway building at 7:54:30, on Jan. 20, 2007.

The New Haven coliseum, R.I.P., in this photo taken from Gateway building at 7:54:30, on Jan. 20, 2007.

Photo: Hearst Connecticut Media File Photo

Photo: Hearst Connecticut Media File Photo

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The New Haven coliseum, R.I.P., in this photo taken from Gateway building at 7:54:30, on Jan. 20, 2007.

The New Haven coliseum, R.I.P., in this photo taken from Gateway building at 7:54:30, on Jan. 20, 2007.

Photo: Hearst Connecticut Media File Photo

New Haven Coliseum architect left town the day it was imploded

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NEW HAVEN — On Jan. 20, 2007, an estimated crowd of 20,000 people watched from building tops and bridges as more than a ton of dynamite was used to demolish the New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum — but one man made sure he got out of Dodge.

That man, the building’s world renowned architect, Kevin Roche, said of the Coliseum that was supposed to breathe new life into the city that he couldn’t bear to see it “burnt to the ground” as Roche, now 95, likes to put it.

“I was very upset, because can you imagine something that took a great deal of time and effort being burned down?” Roche said. “I have buildings all over the world that have survived and here it is in my hometown and they burned it down.”

The coliseum where hundreds of thousands formed childhood memories watching the circus, sports, Ice Capades and built adult and teen memories watching iconic performers that include as Elton John, Queen, Allman Brothers, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Whitney Houston, Queen, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Sinatra, and even Elvis, may be gone, but the venue has achieved legendary status.

It is so legendary, in fact, that there is an active Facebook group, “New Haven Coliseum RIP,” where memories of the old place thrive.

More than 10 years after a committee voted to demolish the building rather than revamp and repair it, city officials and the public are still talking, debating, about the venue’s history and the future of the esteemed parcel referred to the so-called “Gateway to New Haven,” right off Interstate 95.

For now, the old Coliseum site remains a parking lot, adjacent to the Knights of Columbus Museum.

But there are big plans for the site someday — nothing has been approved and the vision keeps morphing as other revitalization efforts move forward in New Haven.

Matthew Nemerson, now the city’s economic development administrator but at the time president of the New Haven Chamber of Commerce, as well as a member of the now defunct New Haven Coliseum Authority, said he was the lone member to vote in favor of revamping the coliseum with state money, rather than tearing it down.

Nemerson said that while he understood then-Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s reasoning in tearing down the structure , he thought of it as a way to keep 2,400 parking spaces and protecting a good investment that had already been made. Nemerson said the Coliseum brought hundreds of thousands of people to the city every year for events.

The state was willing to give $30 million, Nemerson said, but gave the city an option to use the money for a mall on Long Wharf, to retrofit the building to house a community college or to fix the crumbling Coliseum.

The committee voted to demolish the Coliseum, and the mall on Long Wharf was never built. The money went to other city projects, Nemerson said.

“I think it was a lost opportunity to hold onto something that would be very valuable,” Nemerson said.

He said pieces of the building’s skin were at one point falling from high up and that was a problem.

Since the water table was high they couldn’t put the parking underneath to support the concrete for a garage, so Roche designed parking at the top that was accessed by a narrow, quarter-mile, helical ramp that made for many a white-knuckle ride. Many were afraid to drive the ramp.

In addition, the parking garage was leaking and salt ate away at it.

Also, Nemerson said, the building was all electric, which made it expensive during a time when there was an energy crisis.

Roche’s assistant, Linda Scinto, said “the exterior of the Coliseum parking garage was not finished, the spiral ramps at either end were to have been covered with the same tile used on the rest of the building. There were also plans for an exhibition hall that was never built, I believe because of lack of funds.”

There were supposed to be retail shops on bottom, but it always remained dark purple walls.

“There were a lot of issues,” Nemerson said. “There was no money to fix it.”

The memories live on

Audiences flocked to the Coliseum to see the circus, American Hockey League, basketball, wrestling and, perhaps its most memorable entertainment offering, rock ‘n’ roll concerts.

“The building was a great building for concerts,” said longtime concert promoter Jim Koplik, now president of Connecticut and upstate New York Live Nation. “It was an ugly building, but the rock concert set saw the uniqueness.”

He said the space was conducive to rock ‘n’ roll — it made you want to “smoke a joint.”

“People loved going there,” he said.

Dan Santoro, who moderates the “New Haven Coliseum RIP” Facebook page from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he lives now, has many college and beyond concert memories from the Coliseum — said the venue was special to many, even performers. He noted Van Halen chose to film a video there in 1986 and some groups playing New York and staying there would shuttle over to New Haven to perform almost like a warm-up.

Yet, why does the Facebook group exist and remain so active after all these years?

As the Joni Mitchell song goes, Santoro said, “There’s comfort in melancholy.”

On the Facebook page they reminisce about concerts and music. Some of it’s general, some post ticket stubs.

One of the most legendary stories is about how the Grateful Dead were set up at the Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum Nov. 25, 1978, to play and Bob Weir and Mickey Hart had to come onstage and announce that Jerry Garcia was sick, and that the show would be rescheduled.

Those who remember usually recall how chill and peaceful the reaction was to that news.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder

Although the hulking building with the shiny façade was referred to by many as ugly, there were those besides Roche who viewed it as somewhat of a masterpiece.

The design was bold and horizontal, quite the contrast to the tall, neighboring Knights of Columbus headquarters building adjacent to the Coliseum and also designed by Roche.

In a 2013 piece in the Register headlined, “Duo Dickinson: New Haven Coliseum — A Heroic Gateway Gone,” Dickinson, an architect, sounded downright poetic referring to the structure.

“Some architects felt one of our children had died due to its own overplay of aesthetic hubris, but others passionately felt and feel that petty ignorant shortsightedness enabled regressively reactionary aesthetic Luddites to kill heroic beauty,” he wrote.

Dickinson wrote that the Coliseum had three “fundamental generators of its identity” and they were “Undeniable radical newness of aesthetic expression and scale,” “being the manifest horizontal Yin to Roche’s adjacent Knights of Columbus vertical Yang” and “A triumphal gateway structure for the city.”

Dickinson wrote: “The exuberant dynamism of its shape, relatively enormous underside space and outsized imposition on its site was a surprising “Hello!” to everyone launching onto the Route 34 Connector.” Construction began in 1968 and was opened in 1972, built to replace the New Haven arena.

The Coliseum was officially closed Sept. 1, 2002, by DeStefano, and imploded nearly five years later.

When the Coliseum imploded, the blast could be heard for miles. As it fell, a massive cloud of dust and smoke covered the surrounding area and blew toward the shoreline, signaling the end of an era in the city’s history.

The future of the site

There was always much ado about the valuable location as a “gateway” to the city.

Mayor Toni N. Harp said her administration is working on suitable development there so it is, “once again be a prominent feature of the city’s economic landscape.”

“For many years the Coliseum was the site for seminal New Haven events: memorable concerts, sporting events, and special productions were booked routinely and the facility was a regular stop for many residents of Greater New Haven and beyond,” Harp said. “Going forward, my administration will continue working to ensure suitable development of that site to honor its ‘gateway’ location.”

Nemerson said plans as to what will go on the former Coliseum site are on hold until road, bridge work and other connections are completed.

While there have been proposals for the Coliseum site to house hotel space and apartments, the needs of the city have changed in the meantime, as those elements have been integrated into downtown and neighborhoods, adding the desired vitality to the downtown area.

“The Coliseum, rather than being the first site developed as part of our renaissance, it will be one of the last,” Nemerson said. “We’ve lost nothing by having this (Coliseum site) as a parking lot. We’ll do it when the time is right.”

A legendary venue and a documentary

The venue was so iconic that a documentary, “The Last Days of the Coliseum,” played out the story in detail in 2010.

Hanley’s story in the documentary centers around former Mayor Richard C. Lee and his ambitious plans for redevelopment.

After I-95 was opened in the late 1950s (and with I-91 under construction), the Oak Street Connector near where the Coliseum was situated, was built to take cars downtown, and also to the Ella T. Grasso Boulevard, Route 34 and (in the future) to Route 8 in the Valley.

“They built the Route 34 Connector and didn’t know what to do with it. It all starts with that road,” Hanley told Amarante.

Lee was receiving lots of urban renewal money from the federal government and his plan was to create a model city through less-than-affluent neighborhoods.

The Coliseum was built in unison with the Knights of Columbus headquarters on the last empty lot between the connector and the Green.

Hanley told Amarante that Lee brought in a “fantasy team” of architects, including Roche, who would later win architecture’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize, for his work.

Hanley told Amarante he was surprised where his research on this project took him.

“I started out thinking the story would be about what took place there, but as I got deeper and deeper into the papers of Mayor Lee and others, it became clear to me that the story was about the generational chasm between what Lee wanted and what was actually happening,” Hanley told Amarante.

Hanley said at the time that city fathers and Yale sought to keep out “dangerous” new rock ‘n’ roll from their modern city. (Lee banned an Alan Freed show at one point, the Beatles were blocked from playing Yale Bowl by a Yale benefactor, and Jim Morrison was arrested at the Arena). Lee envisioned Glen Campbell and Mantovani music; baby boomers increasingly wanted more compelling entertainment, and eventually “rock ‘n’ roll ended up saving the Coliseum,” Hanley said back then.

More than met the eye

Roche believes the decision to tear down the Coliseum was made because there was a “contingent who disliked” Lee and what he had done with the city.

“I think there was enough bad feelings they decided, ‘We’ll show him,”’ referring to Lee. Some people in power didn’t like some of Lee’s programs,” Roche said.

“If he had stayed alive, it (the Coliseum) would have survived,” Roche said.

Of the Coliseum, Roche said, “I thought it was great. I thought Dick would be proud.”

Roche, of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates in Hamden, is a world player on the architectural stage and 200 projects in the United States and abroad include the Ford Foundation Building; the master plan and extension of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City; the Oakland Museum in California; and the Union Carbide World Corp. Headquarters in Danbury.

In New Haven, his designs, besides Knights of Columbus and the Coliseum, include 195 Church St., Richard C. Lee High School and the original David S. Ingalls Hockey Rink at Yale University.

Dickinson has in his writings expressed how varied opinions were about the Coliseum.

He wrote: “For good or ill, after years of losing millions, the cost-based decision was made to cut the city’s losses and remove the Coliseum. Its void has made some miss its innocent absurdity. Others feel ashamed that a core urban asset could not be sustained. Still others are grateful that an eyesore was excised.”